


A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square

by actonbell



Series: Avengers, Assembled [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 2015 MCU Kissing Fest, Bucky Barnes (past), F/M, Music, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Peggy get that first and last dance. Set slightly before the beginning of <i>The Winter Soldier.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rana Eros (ranalore)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranalore/gifts).



Later, the only real excuse Steve let himself have, and not often, was that it was just too early, before he knew anything or anyone, before Nat, before Sam, before DC. After everything had happened, but before anything else had a chance.  
  
He had been desperate: Peggy hadn't known him for his first brief visits, and then another one had been disastrous when she  _had_  recognized him and simultaneously known he was dead, and had assumed she had "gone completely gaga," as she'd put it while looking right at him (he could hear the exaggerated Brooklyn patois Bucky put on in answer to her Britishisms,  _You and me both, doll)._    
  
He hadn't even been forced into it; he'd volunteered, the way he had for everything his whole damn life, and once again, in volunteering his own fool self he'd dragged the people he loved along with him. He'd been so used to playing a part, being the dancing puppet, that one more performance didn't seem that wrong. But he had known from the start he had done it only because he wanted to, that even if the SHIELD doctors had told him if he didn't do it, he couldn't see her any more, he wouldn't have done it for them. Peggy might have forgiven him,  _had_ forgiven him as it was happening, even, but it didn't matter. She and Bucky had tried to gently (and not so gently) joke away his everlasting guilt, but he grimly thought he'd been right to hang onto it his whole life, because now it was all he had left. And he was damned if he'd let himself soothe it away. Later, everyone marveled at his selfless devotion, moving to DC in no small part so he could see her every week; but he knew, bringing her roses that might as well have been rosary beads, that it was his penance, and far lighter than he deserved.  
  
_(Let go of His cross, Steve, we need the wood for this fucking fire,_  Bucky would say, somewhere back in the Ardennes.)  
  
But back then, the SHIELD doctors had been desperate to restore Peggy's memory. Steve had, too, and his personal needs had dovetailed too neatly with theirs to resist, which should have been his first warning. They told him probably the AD had begun unnoticed years ago, a steady covert operation deep in her brilliant, blazing brain, and even now it was still early yet, she remembered most of her life: her husband, her children, her career. (And him. In a way. Sometimes.) But apparently only a few months ago, just before he'd been found in the ice, she'd started to have less than a crystalline memory of a page she'd just read; she searched for words, found the wrong ones and drew back in dismay. She knew, more than anyone else, what she was capable of, and part of that was knowing when she had started to become less than that, and never turning away.  
  
He was quietly proud that she'd marched herself off straight to the doctor, demanded the latest tests, kept up with the progress of her own decline as long as she'd been able to. He'd read her file, at least the heavily censored parts they'd let him see, and it reminded him of one of Bucky's favourite books. He'd never liked Hemingway that much, but he remembered Bucky reading him the words (before the war, before they knew that afterwards, they wouldn't ever want to read about it)  _If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them._  Nothing could break her; nothing they could do could save her, either.  
  
That first nursing home looked like a weird combination of a lab, a hospice and a debriefing center, and it lived up to his wary first impression (the hospital smell was still there, though. Or maybe it was just something he would always smell now, forever, at least it felt that way sometimes). It was part research facility, part bunker in which to stash SHIELD's founder and most famous agent, part setting for repeated quiet, gentle, relentless attempts to pick the lock of her mind: she'd known what noone else had known, what wasn't in any files, official or unofficial. "Not just where the bodies were buried but who held the shovels," as one doctor with a uniform showing under his white coat had put it in a phrase Steve couldn't forget. They wanted her secrets. Steve only wanted her to know his last secret:  _I've come back. I kept my promise. I'm here._  That was early enough that he still wondered sometimes if they'd lock him in a permanent museum exhibit like that fake room of Fury's, Goering's suitcase on one side and a Thin Man casing on the other.   
  
They had to get the dress uniform from the Smithsonian, because it wasn't really his anymore. Somehow that was only fitting, because it seemed like nothing else was either. He'd tried filling out some requisition papers, and Fury had promised he'd put them through quickly, but they'd gotten stuck in some regulation limbo, just like him. The tailor actually apologized because the tie was different -- Steve then learned more about silverfish and starch than he had ever wanted to know -- but he honestly hadn't been able to tell. He pinned on the insignia and medals carefully, the tailor (who was really someone else, a costume historian, like the soldier-doctors and bodyguard-nurses) watching with suddenly greedy eyes.   
  
"Here, look....the SSR pin goes right there, it was a little higher than usual in that museum picture. Guess I was in a hurry that day." The historian looked ready to cry with gratitude. Bucky would've pinned it on upside-down and convinced them to rewrite the history books his way. Steve insisted on doing his own hair and gig line, though.  
  
When he stepped inside Peggy's room, carrying a bouquet of roses in one hand and a tiny mp3 player in the other, for a heartbreaking second he knew it hadn't worked -- how could any trick fool Margaret Carter? Her eyes narrowed in the particular way they did when she knew he and Bucky were trying to put something over on her. Bucky endlessly tried to get her to believe in bizarre American customs, but she said it was barbarous enough that nobody drank tea. Then her face relaxed and she said, "You're late."  
  
"Yeah, I'm sorry....had to stop off and get these." He waved the roses awkwardly. "Forgive me?"  
  
"Always. Whether or not you  _deserve_  it." She narrowed her eyes again, but this time in her old take-charge way. "Bring those here, there's a vase big enough for them just under....yes." He put them on the little table at the foot of her bed, hoping even if she forgot him after he left, she'd still take pleasure in seeing the roses, anyway. "Oh yes, they deserve pride of place. Red roses....still the romantic."  
  
"Always." He put the mp3 player next to the roses and hesitantly pressed the play arrow -- it didn't seem possible a loud enough sound could be produced by such a tiny thing, but then [Harry James's trumpet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTQVWtSvwUE) sounded out like Gabriel's horn. Howard would have snatched it away, fascinated -- hell, Howard had probably helped design the thing, or its grandfather anyway. _You made me want you And all the time you knew it...._  He didn't sit down, but stood watching her face, drinking in the amused affection.  
  
"Darling, this isn't quite the Stork Club....wait." She focused, with a visible effort. "Is that still standing?"  
  
Steve froze, unwilling to lie, and she read the truth more in his stance than anywhere in her memory. "It isn't, is it."  
  
He shook his head. "One of the first things I checked....I was going to go there the first Saturday they let me out. Eight o'clock....on the dot."  
  
"I was there, with Howard. We got tight in memory of you. Billingsley came by and when he heard why I wouldn't dance with him he gave me a bottle of Sortilège. Never opened it. Kept it until it was vinegar, then a year or so ago I washed out the bottle and gave it to...." The music ended and she focused on him again, coming out of the past. "Steve....you're here. It's really you. How is this possible?" She held out her hand.  
  
He swallowed hard and reached out for it, letting her pull him closer with all her frail strength. He bent over and whispered in her ear, "I couldn't leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance." He kissed her cheek, and when she turned her head, her lips, and felt her pass out of time with him, pulled away by the music.  
  
"Dance with me."  
  
"Do you know how now?"  
  
He'd resisted all the historian's efforts to teach him even rudimentary steps. "Not really. Does it matter?"  
  
"Of course not. Help me up." She imperiously levered herself up on his arm, her weight shockingly light, incongruous no-slip hospital socks showing below the raised hem of her silk robe. Now [Bunny Berigan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyAoTLJAHOk) was playing. They didn't so much move as gently sway together by her bedside, like an exhausted married couple at the end of the day remembering all the dances they'd shared together when the past came through a song on the radio. He was suddenly terrified of shifting her off-balance, making her fall and break a hip. She chuckled. "I'm  _old,_  not Waterford crystal. Just don't dip me."  
  
"Bucky's the one with the rollercoaster Lindy moves, not me."   
  
"You have moves dangerous enough all on your own, Rogers."  
  
She was terribly tired after two more songs ([Jimmie Lunceford,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugAGZglLlpQ) Bix Beiderbecke), and he guided her carefully the few feet back to her bed, then lowered her down, lifted her legs up, pulled the light blankets carefully straight. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slight but steady, and he turned down the volume on the little music player slowly, then switched it off and pocketed it. He turned to go.  
  
But, as Bucky always used to yell at him, he  _never watched his fucking back,_  so as his hand was on the doorknob, he heard her voice behind him, clear as ever: "Do you know what I dreamed, Steve?"  
  
He didn't dare turn around and stood with his head bowed, looking at his own fingers on the gleaming metal as if they didn't belong to him. "No....what?"  
  
"I dreamed I was old and you were dead." Steve couldn't breathe for a moment. "Wasn't that silly, darling?"  
  
Steve couldn't say anything. Peggy sighed gently.  
  
"This dream was much better....perfect, in fact. Goodbye, you beautiful ghost." He heard her sigh again, and then the regular, tiny breaths which meant she had fallen back asleep. He shut the door as quietly as he could, and leaned against it so hard the wood creaked, as if the past was still in there with her and he could keep it safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for such_heights' 2015 MCU Kissing Fest, inspired by ranalore's prompt "Steve/Peggy, dance" http://such-heights.dreamwidth.org/459287.html?thread=8390679#cmt8390679


End file.
